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Thermoformer TEQ has continued to deliver medical packaging solutions for customers working to address critical health needs related to COVID-19. Many of TEQ’s medical technology customers have ‘Essential Business’ status and are playing a key role in preparing and responding to the crisis. With production in full flow, TEQ can provide a shorter supply chain, with all packaging products coming from its cleanrooms based in both the UK – at Hucknall Industrial Park, near Nottingham – and Poznan in Poland. Anne-Sophie Belamine, TEQ’s European sales director, said: “We’re proud to be playing a key role in making sure essential medical products reach the market in these uncertain times. “Our production facilities in the UK and Europe are working around the clock to ensure we support...

The first clinical messaging app to be approved for the NHS Apps Library has been made available to more than 10,000 employees at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, in a bid to help staff communicate with each other and with patients more effectively during the COVID-19 crisis. The Trust has worked with healthtech start-up Hospify to make the company’s secure messaging app available to thousands of staff across its organisation. The platform, which became the first general-use medical messaging app to be approved for the official NHS Apps Library in early March, was co-founded and developed by NHS vascular surgeon Neville Dastur and former technology journalist James Flint. Hospify will allow teams at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust to coordinate and messa...

TE Connectivity (TE), has developed a minimal footprint SMI SO-10 pressure sensor package with vertical port, which is now in full production. Inside the housing, a MEMS pressure sensor, based on TE’s silicon technology platform, and a signal-conditioning IC are combined to provide a fully pressure calibrated and temperature compensated output. Covering gauge pressure ranges from 2.5 to 30 PSI with a digital (I2C) or dual output (digital and amplified analogue) signal with ±1% FS accuracy the compact design enables smaller designs on the system level for a wide range of applications from medical to HVAC. The pressure sensor housing is based on standard surface mount technology and features a JEDEC compliant SO-10 footprint for straight-forward PCB design and assembly. With less ...

Finishing equipment manufacturer Guyson International has recently delivered and installed a further precision cleaning machine to Rolls-Royce Filton in Bristol, for the VentilatorChallengeUK Consortium. This latest Guyson ‘Kerry’ branded Microsolve 250 has three process stages comprising of ultrasonic cleaning, followed by vapour rinsing and freeboard drying, provides precision cleaning of components used in the ventilators and is crucially already cleared by regulators, being used by an existing OEM manufacturer, so can immediately support production now it has been installed. Mark Viner, Guyson’s blast and wash division managing director, said: “It continues to be a really challenging period, but I am very proud of our outstanding workforce our welders, fabricators, fi...

WearGRAPH, a two-year long project part of the EU’s Graphene Flagship initiative, has developed a graphene-based, battery free, wireless and flexible power device for wearable electronics. This design aims to overcome problems associated with more conventional modes of power supply in wearable electronics, including recharging batteries and safety concerns. Led by Graphene Flagship partners Dresden University of Technology and Interactive Wear in Germany, the project has achieved the objectives set at its launch in 2018 – to use graphene’s high level of connectivity and flexibility in textiles with energy harvesting and energy storage, to produce a self-sufficient wearable device. The properties of graphene have allowed scientists to design a system where solar cells and supercapacit...

Whether for laboratory analyses, diagnostics or process optimisation: image processing plays an important role in the healthcare sector. IDS is one of the industry leaders and offers a wide variety of practical USB, GigE and 3D cameras. The company shows that machine vision technology is constantly evolving. With artificial intelligence, for example, it is now possible to realise tasks that were previously considered impossible or could only be achieved with great effort. IDS NXT ocean is a complete solution especially for AI-based image processing. Users do not need to be experts in deep learning or image processing to create a neural network. With the help of the IDS NXT lighthouse cloud software, which is part of the all-in-one system IDS NXT ocean, even nonexperts can train an AI class...

Two California companies were selected for DARPA’s Gamma Ray Inspection Technology (GRIT) program and have begun work to develop a transportable, tunable source of gamma rays for a host of national security, industrial, and medical applications. Lumitron Technologies and RadiaBeam Technologies started work on the GRIT program in April and are exploring novel approaches to achieve high-intensity, tunable, and narrow-bandwidth sources of gamma ray radiation in a compact, transportable form factor. GRIT aims to provide a source of tunable, pure x-rays and gamma rays from tens of keV (kilo-electron volts) up through three MeV (mega-electron volts). Currently, tunable and narrow bandwidth gamma ray sources only exist at highly specialized user facilities best suited for basic research and are n...

NHS workers have accessed training through virtual, augmented and mixed reality (XR) technology since the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, as the health service moved to rapidly upskill its workforce to treat patients with COVID-19. With access to face-to-face training limited – and the need to equip frontline healthcare workers with COVID-specific skills critical – Bristol-based training company Virti stepped in to deliver remote educational programmes to NHS employees. Following approval by Health Education England, Virti were able to roll out specially designed COVID-19 modules for use on their immersive training platform – accessible to NHS staff via a virtual reality headset, desktop or smart device. Clinicians from up and down the country accessed the trai...

Immunodiagnostics company Oncimmune Holdings has signed a further contract with Roche to profile autoantibodies in patient samples collected during cancer immunotherapy trials. Following on the completion of a successful foothill project with Roche, which was undertaken over the last two months, this new contract provides Oncimmune with the opportunity to further contribute to the understanding of individual patient responses to immunotherapy through immune profiling. The project will explore the baseline and on-treatment autoantibody profiles as biomarkers in patients that received cancer immunotherapy, using Oncimmune’s proprietary SeroTag biomarker discovery platform. This contract will commence immediately, with initial results scheduled to be provided to Roche within three months...

Scalp cooling innovator Dignitana AB, has signed a master contract with American Oncology Network (AON), an alliance of community oncology practices in the United States. The FDA cleared DigniCap Scalp Cooling System minimises hair loss from chemotherapy in patients with solid tumours. The agreement provides the opportunity for any of the 45 AON locations to easily provide DigniCap Scalp Cooling for their patients. AON is medical oncology provider with a focus on supporting the long-term viability of oncology treatment in community-based settings. AON currently serves an expanding network of partner practices across 12 states, providing dedicated end-to-end administrative support, access to an extensive array of centralized ancillary services, and proven practice manag...

Adhesives specialist Intertronics has supported the Advanced Textiles Research Group (ATRG) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) to develop electronic textiles that add functionality to materials and garments. After Intertronics recommended dispensing Dymax Multi-Cure 9001-E-V3.5 encapsulating resin with the preeflow eco-PEN volumetric pump, and curing with a Dymax BlueWave QX4 UV lamp, the team at NTU were able to develop a microchip-containing pod which measures 1 mm in diameter and is woven or knitted into textiles. Recent advances in semiconductor and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have reduced both their size and cost. The ATRG is incorporating these components into the yarn-making stage to broaden the possibilities for electronic textiles into areas like temperature sensing, m...

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